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Spiritual Practices as Regimens

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Recently I spoke to a group of leaders at church about how people grow to become more like Christ as they follow Him. What makes “discipleship” hard to implement is people fall along a diverse spectrum of spiritual maturity. You have “beginners” not just in terms of new Christians but also those who simply haven’t thrown themselves into the means of grace to help them grow. As I mentioned in the last blog, we want to help these people jump into practicing basic rhythms in their life.

But then you also have seasoned Christians who have known and walked with the Lord for years who readily practice the rhythms of the Christian life. Yet, many will describe their growth as a Christian as stagnant with a great temptation to settle as if that’s as good as it gets. This is where the regimens come in! Regimens are those spiritual practices that are best done in short spurts because of their intensity. Now allow me a bit of a rabbit trail…

In 313 CE the Roman Emperor Constantine the Great issued an edict that Christian worship would no longer be considered a criminal action. This effectively ended the persecution of Christians. But some of the early Christians noted that persecution brought with it a built in mechanism for spiritual growth. When your life is on the line, you tend to get real clear on what’s worth giving your life to quickly discarding comfort. So with the end of persecution some of the early Christians, the Desert Fathers, retreated to the Nile desert region in Egypt and embraced “asceticism” or giving up bodily comfort and material possessions as a way to “re-create” the effects of persecution.

“Now that the Church and the State were at peace, the idea of martyrdom… [gave way to the ideal] of asceticism [as] a substitute for the shedding of blood”1

As I have thought about it, this is similar to what regimens do… they re-create the effect of “turning up the heat” as a way to point you to the gospel so your character is forged by the Holy Spirit. In reality, this is what trials and difficulties do in general. Again, if the spiritual disciplines/practices are intended to get us to the end of our own resources to declare our utter need for God’s grace, the regimens are short-term, abrupt, “disruptive” practices that reveal our hearts and point us to God’s gracious love while having a refining effect.

Regimens would include among others solitude, silence, fasting, simplicity certain types of prayer, contemplation, mission, and secrecy. In the future, I plan to spend a bit of time unpacking a few of them. A wonderfully complete resource to pick up would be Adele Calhoun’s book Spiritual Disciplines Handbook. There’s a bit more in it for us to master, but there’s something helpful for all of us no matter where we are on the spectrum of maturity.